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Brahms: Symphonies Nos 3 & 4

Available now

Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra bring to a close their celebrated Brahms’ cycle with the release of Brahms Symphonies No 3 and 4.

Brahms is often associated with the idea of abstract music, free of literary models or autobiography, but with the third the composer wrote in many ways his most personal symphony.

Composed at a mountain retreat in 1884, about a year aftercompleting the third, Brahms’ architectural musical skill is nowhere more evident than in his fourth and final symphony, employing Baroque contrapuntal techniques and chromatic labyrinths and described by Hans von Bülow as having the feeling of ‘being given a beating by two incredibly intelligent people.’

‘Gergiev’s powerful performance of the Brahms 3rd Symphony is quite impressive with some notably fine wind and brass playing throughout from the LSO and his division of violins antiphonally helps to keep the textures of Brahms’s more densely scored passages clear.’ Classical CD Choice

‘…the Third demonstrates resilience and muscularity, and in the vaulting and all-important theme of the first movement an undeniable sweep, relaxing most invitingly into the mellifluous clarinet of the second subject.’ Gramophone

***Performance ***RecordingBBC Music Magazine

Concert Reviews

‘Brahms is another composer that needs a fine balancing act between restraint and passion, and the Symphony no. 4 is the most perfect example of this duality in his orchestral music. If performed as it was by the Gergiev and the LSO, it sounded strangely reminiscent of Wagner or Bruckner, but with many fewer of the former’s longueurs or the obsessive “logic” of the latter. It certainly put paid to Britten’s insistence that Brahms’ music was “dull”, “stolid”, “pretentious”. There was not, as you might be forgiven for expecting, a touch ofTchaikovsky or even a Russian accent.’ Bachtrack.com